Mann et al., submitted to Climatic Change, 2003

Jones and Mann [2004] states:

However, a careful analysis (M. E. Mann et al., Critical flaws in a recent criticism of the Mann et al. [1998] study, submitted to Climate Change [sic], 2003) of the McIntyre and McKittrick [2003] result reveals that their anomalous 15th century warmth results from their elimination of over 70% of the 15th century proxy data used by Mann et al. [1998a]. (page 21 of 42)

This analysis is incorrect and the reasons for the differences are discussed at length in MM05(EE). But here I wish to observe that, as of February 25, 2005, this submission to Climatic Change has not been published. Has anyone ever wondered to it? How does this non-publication reconcile with comment 2 at realclimate here)

3 Comments

So Jones and Mann cite as conclusive evidence a document written by one of them, that was submitted the year before, but never published?

That’s an interesting trend. Maybe we could cite as evidence, documents that we thought about sending but never got around to it…or which existed only in our heads.

Lest you think I’m being facetious, just last week we had the full scary headlines that the "Final proof: Global Warming is a Manmade Disaster" had been found, only to discover that it was only a press release by the Scripps Institute in California and that no paper had been completed or submitted for peer review by any competent journal.

It’s an interesting technique – announce the conclusions and then submit the paper and if the paper isn’t published, who cares? By the time skeptics complain, it’s old news

I’ve been a skeptic of the technique called "Announce Results straight to the Press before submitting the paper" ever since Pons and Fleischmann did it with Cold Fusion in the late ’80s, but it’s all too frequent in climate science.

Citation as evidence, papers that cannot be verified or checked is simply Orwellian. How many more "memory holes" are there?